Archive for the ‘awards’ Category

Thursday, August 18th, 2016

Received an email this morning that Tinyville Town Gets to Work got into the Society of Illustrators Original Art Show. I’d forgotten to enter the show entirely this year (I know, how do I even make a living at this?) but Abrams entered the book for me, and it was one of three Abrams books that was selected. I couldn’t be happier.
My books have been in a few times in the past. The first two Everything Goes books got in, as did the fourth Brownie & Pearl book and The Boy Who Cried Alien. It’s been a few years for me, however, and it just makes my week that Gets to Work will be at the show in October.

We have to choose one spread to hang. These are my favorites. Thoughts? (click to enlarge)

Wednesday, October 7th, 2015

I don’t enter many illustration awards competitions. So, consequently, I don’t win many illustration awards. And as an illustrator, I sure never thought I’d win an award from an audio magazine. So it was pretty neat the other day to get a package in the mail from AudioFile Magazine, which is a magazine about audio books.
There have been three books published in the Frank Einstein series, and each of them has a corresponding audio book. For each of these, I’ve trekked up to New York to a recording studio and recorded the robot parts from the books (Jon Scieszka reads the rest of the voices and the narration). I record these in character, with different inflections and personalities for the two robots, Klink and Klank, and then I take the resulting audio files and dress them up with some fun audio gear until they sound like robots. Or, like how I think robots should sound.
Fast forward a bit of time, and AudioFile magazine published a wonderful review of the first audiobook, Frank Einstein and the Anti-Matter Motor, and awarded us an “Earphone Award,” which even though it looks a lot like a certificate of participation that my kids get when their teams come in last place in sports, I’m very excited that the work got this recognition.

And lastly, if you read this far, you deserve to see this. Yes, I don’t just provide the voice of robots. I wear a giant robot head for video as well.

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

I can tell I’ve been rather stupid-busy drawing new stuff, as I don’t normally let an opportunity to toot my horn go un tooted. Somehow last year, sometime between Everything Goes: On Land, Everything Goes: In the Air, The Boy Who Cried Alien, and three Brownie & Pearl books, I found time to fit in an ad campaign for Rubio’s Restaurants, a San Diego chain that specializes in fish tacos, among other treats. This was kind of a get-it-done-yesterday job, as most advertising is, and it came to me because of the complex Where’s Waldo-style tendencies that I have.
Well I got an email last week from Lisa Schiavello, the creative director of the campaign, that the campaign won an Addy award for Red Door Interactive, the agency responsible for creating the ad and hiring me. It took a couple of days before I realized exactly what had happened. The Addys are a pretty big deal in the advertising community and it’s nice to have a project that my drawings are all over recognized, and it’s even nicer to have a client be that much happier about the work that was done. It never hurts to have ad agencies love you in this business.
You can read about the Addy for Red Door here, here, and here.